Happy 2010 to all our readers! This promises to be very eventful year for the Coolproducts campaign and the crucial piece of European Union legislation we are monitoring – the Eco-Design of Energy Using Products Directive. We have a new European Commission, a relatively new European Parliament and a number of important minimum requirements coming into force (having been already voted by EU Member States on a few months ago) and/or about to be decided on imminently.

The new EU Commissioner for Energy, Guenther Oettinger, was grilled by Members of the European Parliament last week. He made a commitment to making a proposal for a mandatory energy efficiency target for the EU as a whole. This can only be good news for our campaign, and is something which we have supported in our Manifesto and which has the support of a large group of environmental organisations, businesses and policy makers. However, he seemed to know very little about the Eco Design Directive – which he will be responsible for – despite the fact that it is one of the policies with the highest potential to achieve EU climate change and energy conservation goals.

Hopefully he’ll catch up soon, and find out that, for example, the new EU piece of legislation setting the maximum level of stand-by and so-called "off-mode" losses from products we buy in the EU - has just entered into force (the full legal text can be found here) on January 7th this year. When a hi-fi, microwave, washing machine or electric toy is on standby mode it still consumes energy - and shockingly, for some electronic products and washing machines or dishawashers this is true even when they are off. However, thanks to the new regulation, for new products this will now have to be, by law, below 1-2 Watt, equal to 8-16 kWh/year. In the future the maximum level of stand-by losses will be limited to below 0.5 – 1 Watt.

The measure on standby and off-mode is expected to save  15 million tons of CO2, or 35 TWh of electricity per year by 2020, as much as the residential electricity consumption of Sweden. This is obviously something to be happy about. The main shortcoming of this measure is it left out of the scope the so-called "networked standby modes" (standby still connected to a network to download updates), which misses about 40 TWh of savings. These will however be covered later under the Eco Design Directive.

The upcoming Member State vote on boilers and water heaters is even more crucial. The decision on what level the minimum requirement should be set at will take place in the Spring, and we hope that it will be an ambitious one. The stock of our heating equipment is responsible for 40% of our energy consumption and around 25% of all CO2 emissions, roughly the same level as road transport in Europe. Ambitious requirements and the introduction of energy efficiency labels could reduce CO2 emissions and energy consumption of household heating by a quarter if we also improved building insulation at the same time. And energy bills would be reduced by up to 44 billion Euros a year.

Other crucial issues that will emerge, and that we’ll try to cover in this blog, are to what extent the Directive will start covering other environmental aspects of products, including resource use, toxics use, recyclability, etc – something it is supposed to do according to the letter of the law but which has so far been neglected. This seems particularly crucial in the case of computers and monitors, another group of products that will soon be regulated under the Eco Design Directive. For the moment, all efforts have been almost exclusively directed at energy efficiency, despite the fact that this is only one part of the picture – albeit a crucial one – when it comes to the environmental footprint of consumer electronics. A new report issued by the European Environmental Bureau last week said just this.

Finally, as the new implementing measures – the ones that have already been decided on – enter into force, it will be very important to find out whether the market is really being transformed, i.e. whether or not the new rules are really being respected. Hopefully we’ll find that there aren’t many free riders selling products that don’t comply with these rules, therefore making the Ecodesign policy ineffective at reaching climate change and energy conservation objectives.

A widespread consensus emerged at the Coolproducts conference in the European Parliament last week on the need for strengthening European Union (EU) energy saving legislation and to introduce new measures, such as a mandatory energy saving targets. And on making sure the requirements being set for products such as boilers, water heaters and other energy using products covered in the Ecodesign of Energy Using Products Directive (EuP) – the main subject of the Coolproducts campaign – are ambitious.

Over one hundred participants from industry, environmental organisations, consumer groups, EU institutions and specialist media took part in the event, which also saw the launch of the Cool Products, Warm Homes Manifesto by a large group of organisations (and now open to sign-ons from civil society, business and policy makers).

The European Commission was broadly supportive of the Manifesto demands. Emmanuel Cabau from the EU Commission’s Directorate General on Energy (DG TREN) said: “The Commission is in line with the Manifesto”. He did admit that the currently regulatory framework is insufficient and needs to be strengthened and added that all the Manifesto points were being considered as part of the EU’s Energy Efficiency Action Plan revision.

Udo Wasser of European Heating Industry (EHI) association went further.  “The Manifesto could have been written by us,” he said, specifying that this was definitely true for the basic five points of the Manifesto. He also added that if the money that has been invested by European governments during this financial crisis in renewing the car park, had been invested instead in getting people to switch to more efficient boilers boilers across Europe, “we would achieve all our targets”. Even more strikingly, Wasser appeared to back the idea of a ban on inefficient, “non condensing” boilers throughout Europe – a move environmentalists support but which the European Commission is however resisting.

Empty consensus?

Of course, this does not mean that environmentalists, the EU Commission and the industry are all saying the same thing. Environmentalists and Members of the European Parliament are trying to push things further. There is also another big challenge: to convince some very reluctant Member States that pushing for strong EU energy savings targets in products and throughout the economy is a good idea.

The support from a cross-party group of Members of the European Parliament is in any case crucial and is likely to have an strong impact on the likelihood of success of this campaign. Peter Liese, a German conservative MEP, supports a binding target and would like to introduce tax incentives to encourage consumers to save energy. Anni Podimata, Greek socialist MEP, stressed the need to close regulatory gaps and establish a coherent EU legislative framework. Fiona Hall, a British liberal democrat MEP, said that although policy makers do not like to talk in these terms, we need more regulation in this area.

As stressed by John Hontelez, secretary general of the European Environmental Bureau, environmental organisations are actually asking for something new and bold: a binding and absolute 20% primary energy saving target, which would be twice the current non legally binding EU commitment of 2006 to achieve 20% savings compared to business as usual.

Hontelez also added that another wide civil society coalition, the Spring Alliance - made up of social organisations and trade unions, also backs a similar target in its own Manifesto. He said there is a widespread belief across a very wide range of organisations, that an energy efficiency revolution in the economy can be carried out in way that is beneficial for society as a whole.

Eco Design plans need more ambition

The Coolproducts campaign’s own Edouard Toulouse warned that the very large potential emission reductions from Eco Design of Energy Using Products (EuP) Directive were being weakened by national policy makers who were trying to accommodate too many concerns from too many sides, such as those around inefficient electric water heaters – which the French nuclear industry is very keen on – or those wanting to retain inefficient boilers in certain buildings that can’t accommodate super efficient ones without some kind of adjustment.

In response, Andre Brisaer  – the EU Commission official in charge of the unit implementing the  EuP  – said he hoped in the future we would be able speak of “Cool Policy”, when referring to this law, because of its ambition in delivering energy efficiency in products. But he warned about the need to make sure there are no significant impacts on functionality and affordability of products regulated under this process.

Monique Goyens, director general of the European consumers’ organisation BEUC  reassured the audience that consumers are broadly supportive of this policy. “Consumers are willing to become green, even if prices are a bit higher, and even at times of economic crisis. But – they need to be enabled to act sustainably” she said.

“Don’t be afraid of consumers, but help them make the right choices,” she added.

Reinforcing this positive message, Dirk Jepsen of German think tank Okopol said that recent research carried out by his organisation showed it would be possible to go much further than we are doing now in the EuP process, and still be cost-efficient, saving money for consumers (although in some cases there would need to be some support to help low income people make the initial purchase of a new super-efficient product).

The way forward

The MEP Claude Turmes, a Green Party member from Luxembourg, closed the conference stressing we need to move away from the  “empty consensus” on energy efficiency, where everybody seems to agree but nothing of any real substance ever seems to happen. He added energy efficiency policy at EU level is even more crucial now that it has become clear that the “ETS (emissions trading system) will not deliver”.

Presentations from the conference can be dowloaded here (note this will dowload a 5MB zip file to your computer)